March 2009 Archive

Here’s your latest Noodle Revue:

---

Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 (WSJ blog) – The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500

I couldn’t figure out what generation I fall into (X? Y? Millenial?), and then I saw this from WSJ:

The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of “Generation F” – the Facebook Generation. At a minimum, they’ll expect the social environment of work to reflect the social context of the Web, rather than as is currently the case, a mid-20th-century Weberian bureaucracy.

Here is Gary Hamel’s list of “12 work-relevant characteristics of online life” (more details if you click through):

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not proscribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers are heroes.

---

The Daily Deal – ExecTweets falls flat

The Daily Deal is a little miffed at being left off the list, and raises their eyebrows on why Mahalo.com founder Jason Calacanis and President Obama were left off the list. To quote:

“talk about a lunch-bag letdown”

I’m sure they’ll catch up soon. ExecTweets is a Microsoft / Federated Media joint effort to highlight…exec tweets. Here are some of the CEOs they’re following so far:

• Adam Brown, Coca-Cola
• Bart Cas, Pepsi-Cola
• Billy Sanez, American Airlines
• Chris Barger, GM
• Don Dodge, Microsoft
• Doug Ulman, Lance Armstrong Foundation
• Georgy Colony, Forrester Research
• Jeff Hayzlett, Kodak
• Linda Cureton, NASA/Goddard Space Center
• Marc Monseau, Johnson & Johnson
• Norman Hajjar, Guitar Center
• Richard Branson, Virgin
• Richard Rosenblatt, Demand Media
• Scott Monty, Ford Motor
• Sean McCormack, Boeing
• Steve Case, The Case Foundation
• Tony Hsieh, Zappos
• Warren L. Habib, MTV

---

The CEO Daily: The birth and traits of the Zappos brand

A walk-and-talk interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh (and a shamelessly prominent Red Bull product placement): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzNBbZqA-Po

---

The White House Blog: Open for Questions

With over 90,000 questions to choose from, President Obama yesterday answered questions while being broadcast online. The questions were user-submitted, but not live. What a useful tool to appear open and engaging.

Related: eWeek – Obama’s Buzz Killer (“Pot advocates flooded the White House site with marijuana legalization questions for President Obama’s online town hall meeting. The buzz died quickly.”)

---

BusinessWeek – Facebook Is Hunting for More Money
BW’s Spencer Ante has sources telling him that Facebook is looking for as much as $100 million in debt financing. Facebook said that it’s part of the normal course of business. Some in Silicon Valley wonder if that’s true.

---

Buzz Marketing for Technology – Facebook Mythbusters

Very interesting survey of Facebook app usage, including findings that:

• 6% of the Facebook users are responsible for 56% of the activity
• The top 50% of high activity users are 32 or older
• 70% of users took over 30 days to respond to a gifting request

---

BtoB Magazine: Mendenhall’s take on transforming HP

HP’s CMO on what it takes to be successful in these challenging times, and on their mix of digital marketing:

I would say more [digital] than most. It is growing very rapidly. As you think about many companies and brands, there is an engagement model that exists online and in the digital environment that has become very robust, especially in a marketplace that is leaning more toward transactional marketing, lower cost-per-capture, and better efficiencies and returns.

---

Is the media dying? "Evolving" might be a better way to describe it given a terrific "State of the Media" memo my Ruder Finn Corporate Communications colleagues drew up today.

 

I’ll spare you the proprietary research parts, but below are some of the highlights that may be relevant from a digital business trends perspective:

As noted in the February 5th issue of TIME, last year more Americans got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines. As a result, across the board print circulation has dropped and so has advertising revenue. For example, in the last six months of 2008 newsstand sales of Newsweek fell more than 13 percent.

This wave of staff cuts began prior to the economic downturn in 2008. The number of full-time journalists working at America’s daily newspapers shrank by 4.4 percent in 2007, the largest decrease in the past 30 years.

(Left Brain editor’s note: what hasn’t experienced the largest decrease in 30 years lately?)

Many of the traditional news outlets have been forced to rethink their format and coverage…Brian Kelly, editor of U.S. News & World Report, still believes in the newsweekly concept, but feels that the delivery method needs an update: "To produce a great report, close the magazine on Thursday night and then readers don’t get it until Monday — that’s insane." To address this reality, the publication will print a monthly issue and will have a digital weekly edition available as a downloadable PDF for its subscribers.

When the decorating magazine, Domino, folded in early February, Charlie Rutman, senior adviser to MPG North America, a media buying company, observed that:"The magazine industry in every category is under extreme pressure, extraordinary pressure, for a lot of reasons: the Internet, the cost of subscriptions in a tough economy, the tough economy, you name it. By the way, there probably are too many magazines, but if companies can’t survive these kinds of pressures we’re not going to have any magazines in the future."

It’s not just the print properties of media companies that are in crisis as advertising also funds online and broadcast media outlets. In February Ad Age reported that U.S. online advertising spending is about to contract. In broadcast, ad spending has already dropped.

Change is Permanent
While the economic recession has played its role in these grim turn of events, some predict this change is permanent…The Wall Street Journal reported on analyst opinions that "big write-downs reflect poor capital allocation on the part of media companies over the last decade and a recognition that declines in the value of their businesses are likely permanent."

 

Does anyone see a silver lining to all this doom and gloom?

Left Brain presents to you: The Noodle Revue. Testing out this new name for our weekly digital business article roundup. So far, it looks like we’ve got supreme Googleability on this one: ZERO results. Do you know of any other 2-word combos that get you zero results?

Before this week’s roundup of articles, I encourage you to check out the Ruder Finn’s newly invigorated Twitter presence: @RuderFinn. Practicing what we preach!

And now, your articles:

---

Ad Age – Twitter Is the ‘Five-Tool Player’ of the Social Web

Somewhat obvious article. Lists Twitter’s uses as:

• Do research.
• Talk to people.
• Energize your brand advocates.
• Support your customers.
• Embrace customer feedback.

Related: Sweet Tweet, What’s Twitter Good For?

---

Public Affairs Asia – The PR prescription

Ruder Finn Asia’s Liu Cheng on how healthcare policy, public relations and patient behaviour are now inextricably linked in modern China.

He recommends:

• Early engagement in PR
• Getting the right message across
• Discernible results

And identifies three challenges:

• Finding the right product.
• Implementation the program in a strict reulatory environment.
• Talent – finding and retaining it

---

Holywood Reporter – Zucker defends CNBC, Jim Cramer

For those of you who have been living under a rock, you probably missed Jon Stewart’s epic takedowns of CNBC and their response.

Well, the mess has made its way up to boss Zucker:

"Daily Show" host Jon Stewart’s recent criticism of CNBC, host Jim Cramer and the business media was "absurd" and "completely out of line," NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said here Wednesday.

"I thought it was incredibly unfair to CNBC and the business media in general," he said in a keynote appearance that opened the 2009 Media Summit New York, organized by the McGraw-Hill Cos. and produced by Digital Hollywood. (Later in the day, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman defended Stewart.)

---

New York Times – Electronic Records: Ready for Patients to Use at Home?

While lots of folks say it’s important to digitize patients’ records, sometimes the whole thing can be pretty abstract. Electronic records no doubt would be helpful if we end up in the hospital and doctors there need quick access to our medical histories. But how much would patients use them day-to-day?

---

 

Ruder Finn is one of the world’s largest public relations agencies. It is not an angry Nordic person or a ship’s stearing device.

Nevertheless, the term Ruder Finn is fairly "googleable." It’s not easily confused with other results, even if you don’t know how to spell it (Rudder Finn and Ruder Fin are common mistakes).

Left Brain’s authors, I must say, are extremely googleable. There no mistaking which Darius Razgaitis or Yan Shikhvarger you’re reading about when you search those names. Mine nets a little over 1,500 results and Yan gets 201.

But other names are not as fortunate for gaining high prominence in web searches. My wife, for example, used to have a name that would return over 1.5 million results that would include anyone from the president of the American Ahteists to the president of Liberia. This can get so bad that a name change is in order, as became the case when my wife married me, and what the French town of Eu is considering.

For companies, this can also be a challenge. Anyone who has had to do a Factiva search for companies like Shell, Apple, and Southwest know what I mean (and they probably also know how to use the fancy Factiva search codes).

Going beyond company name, this should be an important consideration for businesses looking to name their awareness campaigns, new products, and even executive titles (e.g. Chief Creative Officer).

A Malthusian might tell you that this will become more challenging as time goes on, given the finite number of possible combinations. There was even a play once and a book based on Googlewhacking — the art of producing one search result using two words without quotes.

While I doubt we’ll ever run out of names for stuff, I do think things will become increasingly difficult to maintain googleable.

What do you think? Have you ever had to come up with a Googleable name?

Left Brain Candy is still looking for a new name, so for this week we’ll stick with what we’ve got (although Left Brain Droppings has been our favorite suggestion yet).

And now, your weekly articles:

---

Knowledge @ Wharton: The Buzz Starts Here: Finding the First Mouth for Word-of-Mouth Marketing

An amazing article on what I would consider today’s best "influencers":

New research…has found that traditional targets may not be as influential as previously thought. The pharmaceutical firm that sponsored the research…had its "a-ha" moment when they found Physician No. 184 on a map.

Charted on the map was a tangle of points and lines representing physicians practicing in a large city and the connections between them.

The medical community was actually divided into two sub-networks split apparently by ethnicity, with one sub-network dominated by physicians with mostly Asian names and the other with mostly European names. Connecting the two, like a spider suspended on a thread between two webs, was the dot for Physician No. 184 — a doctor the company’s marketing department and salespeople barely knew.

---

McKinsey Quarterly: When job seekers invade Facebook

Only McKinsey would talk about Facebook like this:

"We will witness further conflict between the nonrational instinct to connect socially and the rational calculation to build social capital for professional reasons."

(Thanks to Julie for this, and for this)

---

PR Week: New class of CEOs require less barriers for messaging, efforts (subscription required)

PR Week EIC Keith O’Brien on why Zappos and Twitter CEOs are good communicators. The gist:

• Nimble thinking: Today’s class of CEOs tend to shun bureaucratic thinking.
• Value beyond influencer management: CEOs previously built walls between themselves and reporters.
• Messaging can’t be created in a vacuum: Some might say messaging is dead, but that’s not true.

---

paidContent.org / WaPo: What To Look For In 2009: The CEO Consensus From The Jefferies Internet Conference

The main points:

• More subscription models in 2009 and 2010.
• Consolidation is necessary and likely in online video.
• Display isn’t going away even though things look awful now.
• Profit margins will improve.

---

BoingBoing: Pizza joint gives staff t-shirts with the text of 1-star Yelp reviews

This strategy, unsurprisingly, does not appear in the Air Force’s blog assessment approach. Sample t-shirt line: "This place sucks."

---

Peter Shankman: Five ways Facebook can win the War of Relevance:

From our favorite free media query provider (HARO):

1. Lose the friend cap.
2. My mother is not my girlfriend, who’s not my accountant, who’s not my best friend from junior high school.
3. The Fan Pages don’t work in their current form.
4. Why don’t the fan pages work anywhere NEAR as well as a profile page?
5. We’ll all be on the grid eventually.

Looks like he was fairly prescient: Facebook’s response to Twitter (Techcrunch)

---

New York Times: Why Are iPhone Users Willing to Pay for Content?

Somewhat related: Apple Pulls $1,000 iPhone App

---

WSJ ‘Digits’ blog: Hearst to Begin Charging for Digital News

First, micropayments for riveting conversation, and now this?!

If newspapers turn off their free Web sites completely, the number of surfers is almost certain to decrease, but the financial impact is unclear – largely because there are few large-scale models in existence. (News Corp.’s The Wall Street Journal is the largest newspaper to offer paid online subscriptions, but it has been doing so since the inception of its Web site more than a decade ago.)

---